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This was one of my “Lunch Part 2” bentos. These come about when for some reason I can’t finish my lunch at home (usually running late :P) and I pack the rest of it in the reverse of a takeaway “doggy bag”. It’s quite an experience to pack and arrange bento at the same time as eating at the dining table and with one eye on the clock @.@!

The box

Two-tiered box from Daiso. A bit small for a full meal, but just right for “Part 2” meals :). I finished it all about two hours after “Part 1” and it was most satisfying.

The rice

I wrote earlier about the very unbrown-like Thai Hom Mali brown rice, which you can see here on the left. It doesn’t seem filling at all and I had gobbled up so much that there wasn’t enough for the bento, so I added in regular, white Thai jasmine rice (which the rest of my family eats) on the right hand side. Put next to each other, the white rice is clearly er, whiter, and is also more sticky.

Main dish: miso fish & pumpkin

This is what the dish really looks like, before I picked out a couple of pieces to go into the bento (top left hand corner). Full credit for this dish goes to my family’s Indonesian domestic helper who has been as inspired by my collection of Japanese bento books as I have :) – which also goes to show that you don’t need to be able to read the language to get a lot out of cookbooks with great photography!

Slice the fish (probably a grouper or snapper variety used here) and pumpkin, coat lightly in cornflour and shallow fry. Drain on paper towels while preparing the sauce. Fry thinly-sliced leeks until cooked, adding enough water to make a gravy. When the leeks are about done, stir in half a teaspoon of miso. If desired, thicken the gravy with cornflour.

Right now, I happen to have a organic wheat+soya bean miso, which is also extremely salty, so this tiny amount is enough to season the dish, impart a subtle miso taste as well as give it this rich orangey-brown colour.

In general, on the odd occasion when I do add sauces of any kind (particularly fermented ones such as miso and soya sauce), I use as small an amount as possible to minimise the chance of food intolerance reactions, and if necessary, I won’t consume the same foodstuffs two days in a row.